As promised, here is an update on our ever evolving project! :)
I was looking through pictures to post here just now, pictures that we just took recently, & they are already so changed I didn't even want to post them! The progress has been wonderful & we really are encouraged that we'll have it livable by the Spring at least.
Okay. So here's the deal. If I share these with you, you've got to promise me that you'll try to have "the vision." At first glance, it totally looks like crap & I'll be the first to admit it. But seriously, all it takes is a little bit of imagination & you will be able to see how cool this house will be when it's done. Promise? Okay. Here goes.
This is a picture of the house itself as of today. Siding is up!! :) Yay so much better!! Unfortunately we didn't get this step done until after it started to get cold, so this is pretty much how it's going to look until spring. We'll paint as soon as we can. We plan on a sage green color for the siding, white for the windows & trim, & black for the shutters. Can ya see it? I tried to use that Sherwin-Williams app that "paints" your photo so you can see what your house would look like with a different color, but it was pretty crappy. So this is all we get for now. (Anyone know of a different app that's good? I'd love to play! :))
Here is a closer up picture of our front porch being re-built. It's been an empty hole for quite a while now. That was another project that ended up being bigger than we expected. All of the concrete needed to be re-poured. Fun times. But now that is all being put back together & will be so pretty when it's done. By the end of the day today, the other column should be put back up. It's been down since we saw this house 10 years ago! (Which means god knows how long before that it's been down...).
This used to be a great big gaping hole. All sealed up & brick re-mortared. Looks small, but it's a big deal! :)
Okay. Huge deal here. ELECTRICITY!!! Hallelujah! (Pre-siding, so as you can see this picture is a tiny bit older). We had to route electricity from the pole to the house & re-do
everything. What was there was so old it was very unsafe. So the ditch you see is freshly dug to ground the wire all the way to the pole & the box is all brand new. Natalie is sitting on the spool of wire to give you an idea of just how massive this stuff really is! Such a big step!
And here's the very best part on the subject of wiring electricity. (God I love this town!) So anyway, Matt & I ended up at the house last week on an unplanned 5 minute drop-in. (He took the afternoon off & we were planning to go see a movie that didn't end up playing, so we shouldn't have been there). Anyway, not 2 minutes after we pulled in, a car pulls in behind us in our driveway. Umm, okay Who's this? Well it turns out it's a couple of seniors from the Academy. They were looking for a project for their class & were directed to Mathew & our house by their instructor. They are offering for their whole class (and their instructor's very strict supervision) to come in the next few weeks & wire our whole house for us FOR FREE!!! Are ya kiddin' me?!?! Hell yeah! Sign us up! :) So of course we said yes & we're working on getting things ready for them inside to get that started. Yay Yay Yay!!
Final exterior picture: the porch/mudroom. (Again, a picture before the siding was finished... well it's still not on the porch, but we're not going to dwell on that. lol). This took pretty much all summer. What is now truly another room of the house, used to be a sunroom type thing that was falling down. It was so full of junk we couldn't even tell how badly it was in disrepair. So that got yanked out (with the exception of the roof) and got all re-done. Because of the angle, that entire foundation was re-poured with concrete one bag at a time by poor Matt. (Couldn't fit a mixer in where we needed it). He estimates it probably took 500 bags!! Walls replaced completely, brand new windows, awesome. We plan on it being a four-seasons room with mudroom storage for all of our winter gear before entering the house (it is Vermont you know! ;))
Okay, next up: interior photos. Remember, you've gotta use your vision, okay? It's not as far along as you might picture. BUT, there has been a lot of work going on getting things ready to all be put back up. You wouldn't believe what it takes to make a house safe & able to withstand another century & a half! Plus, there was a LOT of junk in this house that took a long time to remove. So keep that in mind as you look at the nakedness that is our walls. It'll get there I swear! :)
Here, I just need to illustrate the rediculousness we've needed to go through to rebuild this house. Where Natalie & Matt are standing? That's where our kitchen table will go. If you look behind them you can see where the bottom of the wall should be. Beneath the floor? A ginormous obnoxious slab of slate. OMG. It's insane. So in order to do a whole lot of things to make the floor stable, the rock needed to be chiseled down. On the right of the picture you can see Natalie at the top (about where she's standing in pic #1) with me taking her picture from the basement below. Who knew you could go rock climbing in your own house?! lol
This is the basis for our fireplace. I have no idea where along the line of this house's long life that the fireplace was taken out (I'm certain there was one. There was a chimney... and hey it was 1860! Of course they had a fireplace). At any rate, we needed to build a new one from the ground up & here is where it finally met the main floor. The chimney is being built over to the right of the picture. (it will connect at an angle above the fireplace itself). The chimney is now all the way up through Natalie's room above. (See! Progress!)
The top of the stairs. (Ehh. They can't all be winners! lol) Behind the wall with the oddly placed window (what will be stained glass when Matt is done with it...) will be the boys' massive closet.
Speaking of the boys' room, this is it! They have the biggest room in the house & the best views. We're pretty sure it was intended to be the master bedroom. But because of how we wanted our house to flow we decided to give the front room to them. (And they are not allowed to complain about sharing because they get this awesome room!) That doorway is to the aforementioned closet. We think it might end up being a closet/game room. Seriously. It's that big!
Next to them is Natalie's room. View is from what will be the bathroom and you can see through to the boys' room. Chimney needs to go through one little corner, but we should be able to still have plenty of room to make it cute.
(Across the way is the guest room. I have no idea why I didn't take a picture of that. But hint hint. We have a guest room! ;))
And this is our room. Behind that wall is our walk in closet & through that door and across a little stairwell is our master bath. (This is why we chose the back room. So we could have all of that space). We think the house was designed so that the family could live in the front rooms, & this could be the servant's quarters. That's what we've been told at least. Oh well. We like the back. It's quieter! :) That stairwell I mentioned goes down to the kitchen area.
Yikes. This will be our kitchen (as viewed by the back stairs I mentioned above). It's a hell hole right now & has become kind of a storage center for all of the stuff it takes to re-build the house. So there will be a full state of the art kitchen where Mathew is standing, including custom built cabinets by Mathew himself. The center doorway enters into the dining room and the doorway on the left is a giant walk-in
gorgeous pantry. One of the beautiful attributes to an older home. (In need of some love though).
I didn't take a picture of the office, dining room & living room right now. They are filled to the ceiling right now with insulation. You can see why here:
The picture on the left is when the insulation was all delivered. I think it was six palates? Whatever it was, the stuff is massive! But even though it's overkill, this house is going to be the best insulated in town! (All part of our energy efficiency plan). The picture on the right is the insulation already going up in the house. I think this is the wall of our weight room, which is located just below our master bathroom. Slowly but surely this is going up on all of the exterior walls of the house as we speak. WooHoo!
So that's it! That's where we are right now. (And when I say "we" I mean Matt. I haven't done a damn thing! lol) I can't wait until I have even more to share with you!
